


Ambition Over Love

by Igknight (Minatu)



Series: 30 Day Broh Challenge [6]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: 30 day broh challenge, Day 13, F/M, M/M, One-Sided Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 21:24:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4495251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minatu/pseuds/Igknight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iroh had never fallen in love before, and he rather planned to keep it that way. He wanted to be a four-star general, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ambition Over Love

**Author's Note:**

> Day 13: Titles
> 
> _Right from the start_  
>  You were a thief  
> You stole my heart  
> And I your willing victim 
> 
> \- "Just Give Me a Reason" by P!nk ft. Nate Ruess

Iroh was only a brigadier general, a feet he had made with almost twenty years of blood and sweat. He was proud of his rank, being one of the youngest generals in the Fire Nation militia. He remembered the day he became a flag officer with a swell of pride. Iroh had dedicated his over sixty percent of his life to it after all. Perhaps the only thing he regretted was that he had never really lived outside of the job. All of his friends were generals and colonels. He didn’t know any civilians and rarely chose to interact with them to begin with. Civilians didn’t understand the importance of Iroh’s work. They didn’t understand why it was so important to him. 

He had tried going on a blind date that his mother had set up for him once. It was probably one of the most awkward nights of his life. The girl batted her eyelids, giggled and didn’t seem to comprehend a word of what he said. Sure, it was full of conversational things like the terrors of being at sea for months on end. He’d even told her about the time a mine blew a hole in one of the ships he’d been deployed on (he’d been a major at the time, and had nearly died with the ship). There wasn’t something out there in the vast ocean with Iroh and his crew. They were the firefighters, the repair crew. If they failed, many men would be condemned to watery graves. 

It was when the girl had the  _gall_  to laugh when Iroh told her about their close encounter with a whale-dragon. The thing nearly flipped the destroyer! Iroh politely took his leave then, finding he was getting no where with the girl he was speaking to and honestly wanting nothing more to do with her. 

Iroh, the youngest brigadier general, decided that he would dedicate his life to being the best that he could be and gave up all prospects of romance entirely. Sure, he was teased for it by his XO more than one time, but honestly, he wasn’t too bothered by it. It had been his choice, after all. 

And Bolin... Bolin became the exception. Even though Iroh had never felt much attraction toward anyone and never looked at anyone twice in any way that implicated attraction, but after being tied up to the younger boy and running amok, he found himself considering Bolin in a strange way. Iroh tried his hardest to hide it. Bolin was so much  _younger_  than him, and it wasn’t like he would even be mildly intrigued by a thirty-something year old. No, Bolin was just too precious to be taken by Iroh.

So the brigadier general pretended he had never felt anything at all, and life simply went on. He was a general after all, he had appearances to upkeep. He had to keep the yeoman beneath him busy with plenty of secretarial work. It was a little enlisted girl who was as thin as a needle and as sharp as one. He rather enjoyed the resilient first sergeant’s company. She liked to point out that he knew nothing about how they formatted documents and would be completely useless without her.

He began to forget. Iroh forgot about the heart warming grin that Bolin would get when he was complimented, just moments before he turned rosy cheeked. Iroh forgot about the incessant jokes that Bolin would make as if it was his job to be the comic relief. He forgot how the boy managed to stir feelings in his steel heart.

That was until he saw the young man again, ripping his sleeves off on a black and white screen and running to save some lovely looking girl, and quite suddenly, Bolin felt like something more than a faint dream then. Iroh’s heart was stirred back to life once again by that goofy grin. The weirdness of it was that it was Bolin inside of a mover as opposed to actually being tangible. It made Iroh consider visiting Republic City, if for nothing else than old time’s sake. He hadn’t really  _been_  there since the battle after all.

.

“G-good morning, sir!” cried a surprised pfc that was stationed in Republic City on the USS Dragon. Iroh nodded to the trembling,  _green_  sailor, whose salute was almost perfect except for the bit of thumb that Iroh spied. 

“Good morning,” he responded, and paused to fix the pfc’s salute before continuing on. He was in his civilian clothes, so the kid didn’t have to salute him like that. It was rather embarrassing, since several civilians had looked up to see who was shouting. Iroh slid his hands in his pockets, staring up at the murky sky. It didn’t look it was going to rain, but Iroh had found his sense of weather was rather terrible in Republic City, so he brought an umbrella along just in case.

It was lucky that he did, because it started raining not thirty minutes later, and Iroh had the sheer luck to run into Bolin who was in dire need of an umbrella himself. 

“Good morning,” Iroh spoke, waving at the younger man, and Bolin grinned at Iroh.

“General! How are you?” Bolin asked, and Iroh felt a bit of disappointment by how Bolin addressed him. Iroh stepped up to the awning that Bolin was standing under.

“Do you need some help getting home?” Iroh asked. Bolin was eager to agree, and they walked to Bolin’s apartment, the air filling with Bolin’s idle chatter. Iroh was more than happy to be an idle listener after all. It was enough just to be friends, Iroh convinced himself. 

.

It didn’t surprise Iroh when Bolin started dating Opal, a girl who was close in age to Bolin himself. What surprised him was how nothing changed between he and Bolin. Iroh had expected for their communications to slowly become more infrequent, but it merely continued in the usual endless stream. It was difficult sometimes to read about how Bolin gushed about Opal. Sometimes Iroh wondered if he was boring Bolin with his daily life at sea. Mostly it was sleep, eat, work, eat, sleep, repeat. Sometimes Iroh didn’t even get a shower, but usually as a result of fish being sucked up into the ship. 

When the letter of Bolin’s break up with Opal came, Iroh was surprised. From the way that Bolin often wrote about the two of them, it had sounded like things had been going really well. Bolin never proffered an explanation either. He sounded rather bummed about it as well. Iroh didn’t question it though. Bolin was still young, after all. He would be in love again soon enough. 

Bolin kissing Iroh when Bolin got hammered for the first time on his birthday had also been unexpected. Bolin murmured slurs to Iroh afterwards, but Iroh didn’t really listen. He wasn’t even thinking about how Bolin had sloppily attempted to put an actual kiss to Iroh’s lips. He was actually thinking about how it was time to kart Bolin back home. Iroh wasn’t even in the mood to deal with this. 

In Bolin’s apartment, Iroh couldn’t figure out how to detach the koala-monkey that Bolin had suddenly decided to be. He clung tightly to Iroh and at some point in the night, Iroh remembered very distinctly hearing Bolin whisper “ _Opal”._ Iroh was there taking care of Bolin, and yet the boy still thought of his ex-girlfriend. Iroh even stayed when Bolin woke suddenly to throw up, and then wept, begging Iroh to not leave him all alone. Iroh remembered that Bolin’s breath had been absolutely vile. He’d never been a big fan of anything other than wine.

.

Iroh had never expected Bolin and Opal to suddenly start dating again, and Iroh considered stopping the letters, but couldn’t bring himself. Even as the years went by, and letters about Bolin’s little family came with a good bunch of pictures that showed Bolin’s pudgy little daughter. He even continued to write, growing to the rank of general and eventually general of the Fire Nation Navy. 

One day though, General Iroh quit writing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> (( I swear the original intent was for there to be romance!! Nothing went according to plannnnn... *weeps* ))
> 
> ~ Fire


End file.
